Israel’s image takes another hit with the ‘Prisoner X’ scandal

The case of Australian and Israeli citizen Ben Zygier and his alleged suicide in an Israeli jail in December 2010 provides an instructive window into the secretive relationship between Canberra and Tel Aviv as well as the dynamics between the Zionist state and friendly Western nations. The death of the former IDF soldier and Mossad agent has triggered a global media storm after last week’s ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent story revealed the identity of Prisoner X.

But what makes this international intrigue all the more fascinating is not what most of the commentary is obsessing over — the details of Zygier’s life and how he ended up in a high security prison — but the ways in which young Jews are groomed by an Israeli intelligence service to commit acts of terrorism and subterfuge across the world under the guise of protecting national security. It is done with the consent of Western governments and intelligence services, including Australia’s.

New Matilda spoke to a former senior Australian ambassador who says that ASIO and ASIS work hand in glove with the Israeli government, including the assistance of grooming potential spies on Australian soil at universities such as Monash in Melbourne and military academies like Duntroon. Australia long ago outsourced much of its military and intelligence, as well as foreign affairs sovereignty, to Israel and America. “There’s little we [Australia] would not do to please them”, my source says.

The Zygier case has forced Israel’s repressive censorship over national security laws to weaken — it was amusing witnessing Israeli journalists tweeting information about Prisoner X during the broadcast of Foreign Correspondent despite there then being an Israeli gag order on the case — so it’s unsurprising that Israel is so keen to keep details of the story secret. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he doesn’t believe there should be any sunlight on the actions of his country’s intelligence services in the wake of the Zygier case getting wide coverage.

After all, Zygier was a Mossad agent who may well have been involved, directly or indirectly, in the murder of a Hamas operative, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, in Dubai, the murder of Iranian nuclear scientists in Iran or the recruitment of members of the Sunni terrorist organisation Jundallah, infamous for attacks inside Iran. All these acts are breaches of international law and none are condemned by the Zionist lobby or leading politicians. What the Jewish community worries about is the wider society regarding Jews as disloyal to Australia.

New Matilda spoke to a senior Israeli defence correspondent who said that he knew about the identity of Ben Zygier in 2010 at the time of his death but was unable to report it because of the Israeli gag order. He said he thought the Australian and Israeli citizen wasn’t a bad man but simply found himself in above his head. He faulted Israel trying to keep the story secret for so long and believed that the virtual silence of the Australian Jewish community was due to embarrassment and ignorance of the case. Their response may have been co-ordinated with the Israeli embassy. They believed, he argued, that by speaking out they may shine an unwelcome light on Israel, something that goes against their DNA.

Although Israel denies that it tortured Zygier while in custody, it’s clear that international norms were breached during his incarceration due to a lack of legal representation and conditions inside jail. News Limited’s Andrew Bolt argues that critics of Israel always look for the worst in the Zionist state, but Israel is doing a fine job on its own. It’s possible, according to an Israeli journalist, that Australia put Zygier’s life at risk by leaking information about his work with Mossad to the media.

The ignorance about this case expressed by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Bob Carr stretches credibility because Israeli and Australian intelligence agencies likely knew all about the actions of Zygier before his death. Furthermore, Australia offered a muted response to the illegal Israeli use of forged passports in 2010 for the purpose of murdering Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh; Israel barely received a rap on the knuckles. Deputy Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Julie Bishop simply said that Australia also forged passports so Israel was not alone in acting illegally.

It is worth considering the reaction of New Zealand to a similar passport forging incident back in 2004, which led to diplomatic sanctions against Israel. New Zealand’s then Foreign Minister Phil Goff said last week that he was “contacted by the Israeli government at the time asking whether we could reach an arrangement over it”. He wouldn’t budge.

“No go. These people have committed criminal offences in our country and they’ll be treated just like anybody else who commits a criminal offence and that we did not appreciate another country seeking passports to misuse for purposes that frankly are unacceptable which is the assassination of people for their own political purposes.” It is unimaginable that any senior politician in Australia would speak like Goff: “We’re not prepared to see friendly countries act in that sort of criminal way against us.”

The details around Zygier’s life and death remains murky. New Matilda has been told, by somebody who knows the Zygier family well, that two Mossad agents with an Australian connection spoke at his funeral in Melbourne and they said how sad it was that Zygier had “lost his spirit” towards the end of his life. No other information about the funeral is forthcoming.

The complicity of silence around Zygier’s actions within the Zionist establishment — witness the “see no evil, hear no evil” stonewalling by Philip Chester, President of the Zionist Council of Australia, on ABC Radio National Breakfast last Friday — is symptomatic of a mainstream Australian, Jewish community that encourages and facilitates young Jews to visit Israel and idealise its identity. Palestinians are largely absent in this worldview. The occupation is virtually non-existent. Iran, Hamas and Hizbollah are the new Nazis. Building a ghettoised, Zionist state, after centuries of Jews often living in isolation across the world, is an irony lost on far too many people.

What the Zionist lobby and its political and media courtiers don’t want to discuss is their complicity in this affair. They all believe that young Jews have the right to move, fight or spy for Israel, including during wars against Lebanon and Gaza, while Muslims who want to join their brethren in Syria, Lebanon or Palestine are labelled terrorists for doing the same thing.

From a young age, the Zionist schooling system and its associated entities indoctrinate Jews to slavishly back Israel and demonise Arabs. Blindly supporting Israel may seem like a good idea to them but in reality has created a monster from which the insecure Jewish community is unlikely to recover any time soon; growing numbers of young Jews are disillusioned with an occupying Israel and no longer tolerate an Israel lobby that acts as propagandists for Zionism. The death or murder of Ben Zygier should be a wake-up call to Australian Jewry that even its own can be treated shabbily by Israel.

Throughout this whole scandal, the reality of illegally imprisoned Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, countless people without a recognisable face in the international media, is ignored. Israeli state-sanctioned racism against Palestinians is conveniently forgotten when talking about a fresh-faced man from an establishment, Zionist home in Melbourne.

After yet another Zionist brutality emerges in the press, the public image of Israel will take another necessary hit. Once the Zygier story disappears from the headlines, the occupation of Palestinian land will continue and deepen. The Oscar-nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers, interviews six former Shin Bet heads, Israel’s internal security agency, about their work and views on Israel’s future. They’re pessimistic and argue from deep knowledge that an Israeli police state exists in the West Bank.

No amount of covert missions from the likes of Ben Zygier will hide this damning reality.

105 Responses

Actually, I think many Jewish Australians now question the romantic idealization of Israel and why they should ever encourage their children to go there, join the IDF and live the Zionist colonialist dream.

“The death or murder of Ben Zygier should be a wake-up call to Australian Jewry that even its own can be treated shabbily by Israel.”

The bots will shaft everyone if the circumstances demand it. They have no shame and zero integrity. It was visible as far back as 1944 when a bot in Romania sent several thousand Romanian Jews to the death camps in return for a few safe passes for the local senior bots to Palestine.

“i don’t judge all zionists by the same standards of what kasztner did, which was so abhorrent it is hard to comprehend.”

It’s not so hard to get; it had the same endpoint as what the Zionist union in US (under Rabbi Wise) and UK did, namely blocking all immigration quotas for Jews from German-occupied Europe in order to oblige all those who otherwise could escape to go to Palestine. Documents of the time also specify, as was the case with Kasztner, that the ones to emigrate should be young and strong and productive, not old or sick. So while Kasztner negociated with Eichmann and Co, Rabbi Wise and the Zionist organizations were lobbying like crazy to forbid entry into the US and UK.
It is entirely consistent with Zionist goals and MO and should not be seen as anything out of the ordinary.

Zionism is a cruel ideology. The cult of the land comes before individual rights and dignity. They have shafted so many people over the years- it is the DNA of the belief system. And if you go to Ofer or Shiloh and ask them was Kastner justified in what he did to make Erez Israel possible there are many who will agree.

They don’t take care of the land either. It is all metaphysical, the love.

It is entirely consistent with Zionist goals and MO and should not be seen as anything out of the ordinary.

right, and drone casualties are entirely consistent with american goals and MO and should not be seen as anything out of the ordinary either. none the less as an american the actions of my leaders do not represent my will. it is a gross fantasy to imagine the actions taken by jewish/zionist collaborators represented the will or intention average zionists jews of that era who had no understanding of what was occurring in hungary nor the ability to change it. seriously, lets get real. everything about the holocaust was ‘out of the ordinary’, i really don’t get how you can even use that phrase wrt what happened in hungary. there was nothing ordinary about it. i don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Annie – “i don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
I can understand that way better than you imagine, for personal reasons.
But then, are you seriously comparing the situation of what is done by one’s government (you wrt drones) with that of a follower (voluntary follower against everyone’s best advice) of a crazy movement ?

As seen today in Australia, the public interests on prisoner X rapidly decaying. The public is not interested in prisoner X and minding on its own business. Jewish communities expressed their confident and support for Israel. Australian Government officials call to explore and check the Australian security agencies. The Anti-Israel ‘Blogeria’ trying to keep the issue on top headlines, not because they care for Zygier who acted wrongly but because they understand that they can bash Israel , especially because most of the facts are not known to them and their readers.
But the detainee X is a X that has a name (so he is no X). When he was arrested, the Australian ambassador to Israel was updated, revised Australian defense and intelligence officials, the Zygier family was updated at the first day and Zygier had four well known Israeli lawyers to help him.
The Zygier case is that he was investigated by the Australian inner security agency for the reason he renewed his passport, and during the investigation Zygier revealed that he was working for the Mossad and he also told them what the project he did for them. The Israelis found it and questioned him about the leak. He was supposed to be released after signing a non-disclosure state secrets agreement. Zygier probably committed suicide in prison before that, because of the shame and weakness he felt.

“What papers are you reading because it’s still prominent in the Fairfax papers.”
He’s not reading any or he’s lying either way his post is his contribution to watering down the effects of this affair which quite obviously is still up there. What wouldn’t an Israel worshiper do for his idol? Sometimes small things like that count to.

To be fair he may just be reading (or watching, still making the nightly news, at least SBS & ABC anyway) through the Zionist prism which has a remarkable ability to simply block out inconvenient facts.

one more propaganda Bird “… trying to keep the issue on top headlines, not because they care for Zygier who acted wrongly but because they understand that they can bash Israel… ”

Acted wrongly? Oh no, if he did anything to cross the Zionists he acted rightly and should be celebrated. Bash “Israel”? Anytime! Illegal, murderous invaders with a both racial supremacist and theocratic tyranny, threatening the whole world with nuclear war, who in his right mind wouldn’t want to get rid of that?

“New Matilda spoke to a former senior Australian ambassador who says that ASIO and ASIS work hand in glove with the Israeli government, including the assistance of grooming potential spies..”
&
“The ignorance about this case expressed by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Bob Carr stretches credibility because Israeli and Australian intelligence agencies likely knew all about the actions of Zygier before his death.

And then this….

“It’s possible, according to an Israeli journalist, that Australia put Zygier’s life at risk by leaking information about his work with Mossad to the media.”

Makes no sense….if Australia and Israel work hand in glove why would they leak Zygier’s Mossad work and put him at risk.
This whole story makes no sense. There’s something else to it.

I agree that there is no reason why the Israeli security services should turn against a committed servant just because of something in Australia for which he was not responsible. Did he somehow turn against them?

Yep, there’s something more here. Read in the news this am article quoting former Mossad head –saying Zygier hadn’t revealed anything to anyone and hadn’t threatened to reveal anything—-that he was jailed as a “precaution”. Then he mentioned something about Zygier “got in over his head”..whatever that meant.
What makes most sense to me is he was imprisoned because he knew something he wasn’t suppose to know–something Isr couldn’t afford to have him walking around knowing.
And whatever it is is it’s a lot bigger than Dubia and passports..the whole world knows everything about that there is to know except the real names of the Mossad agents who did it. We knew they used Aussie passports, we knew they got some money thru a US bank, we even saw the tape of them in the hotel and sketches of the perps.
Nope, it’s something else.

Vanunu, who revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program, was tried, sentenced and released (with severe conditions admittedly) at the end of his time. He was not ‘suicided’ like Zygier, so that suggests Zygier was involved in something more damaging to Israel than the revelation of its nuclear weapons program. The public, glossed-over passport debacles are deceptions, distractions.

That still doesn’t take away from the fact that he was disappeared. No doubt he was about to reveal something that would be perhaps irreperably damaging to Israel’s image or more likely: it’s legitimacy.

this was obviously more than one bad apple or he wouldn’t have been imprisoned under such tight security. what i meant was i don’t think he suicided and he could have been murdered while they were trying to get more information out of him.

I interpret Zygier’s trajectory as him moving to Israel in the early 2000s, being recruited to Mossad and then at some point becoming disillusioned with either Israel as a whole or Mossad’s tactics at which point he spoke to ASIO in Australia.

This correlates with the information in Loewenstein’s article re: Zygier’s funeral where to Mossad agents spoke about Zygier “losing his spirit”. Anecdotal information from a Ynet article posted on his (Loewenstein’s) web site indicates that Zygier’s family are ashamed of his actions:

Richard, Brenda’s neighbor, remembers the glorious return of one soldier. His name was Ben Zygier.

“He came back with the aura of a hero,” he said. “But now his family doesn’t dare show their faces around the community out of remorse and shame,” he said.

It shocked me to read about the two Mossad agents speaking at Zygier’s funeral given they [Mossad] likely did him in. “Losing his spirit” sounds like a calculated slap in the face to the family and a passive aggressive charge of disloyalty – and it appears to have worked.

If Zygier became disillusioned with Israel and did something about it then I applaud him as a hero. When the shit really hits the fan in Israel I expect his reputation in the Melbourne jewish community will recover and he will become lauded as a hero; a canary in the coal mine. But that is some time away…

“Losing his spirit” sounds like a calculated slap in the face to the family and a passive aggressive charge of disloyalty – and it appears to have worked.

Exactly. Reiterating the claim that he was “losing his spirit” was meant to plant the seed of doubt in the parents’ minds that Zygier committed suicide because he got depressed and desperate after failing his Jewish homeland and betraying its trust.

One thing can be said about this incident with 100% certainty, Zygier is dead because he dared have a conscience.

He questioned his actions, duties or those of Israel and as a result became a threat to those in charge of that ship of fools.

Like someone else wrote here a few days ago, Victor Ostrovsky was lucky — certainly smarter and more experienced — to have managed to get out of Israel while he was still alive.

By the way, according to Israeli press reports Zygier had an Israeli wife and kids living in Israel with him.

Having a conscience as the ultimate crime in Israel. Kind of like caring about “human” rights is the mark of Cain. treated like a soul-eating poison. The way “leftists” are vilified in Israel social media is unbelievable. I don’t think anyone here on MW even scratched the surface of the vitriol directed at anyone who’d dare to sympathize with palestinians.

If indeed our prisoner X was found to have had the stirrings of conscience that would disqualify him from walking around free. one can never trust such a person in the Israeli rule book, so throwing the book at him is the least they could do.

Like someone else wrote here a few days ago, Victor Ostrovsky was lucky — certainly smarter and more experienced — to have managed to get out of Israel while he was still alive.

Ostrovsky’s smarts entailed hiring Claire Hoy (male), the eminent Canadian parliamentary reporter, to write his story. Hoy’s reputation is impeccable, beyond reproach. Hoy’s ground rules were that everything Ostrovsky told him or gave him would be vetted, no exceptions. Not even Israel would attack Hoy; it used the US Supreme Court to try to stop publication. If Israel had gone after Hoy, it would have been an international incident non pareil.

I get the ‘impression’..from what I constantly see zionist say…..that their paranoia and obsession with Jewish suffering—(yonah, jon, others I see on the net)…..is such that they would demand his head on a stake if they thought he betrayed Israel in any way….or would be fine with locking him up on the off chance that he even ‘might’ ever. It appears the last thing Zionism believes in is individual rights or anyone’s rights if it’s inconvenient to zionism….the collective is everything the individual is nothing.
Yea, they can moan and spin about ‘precious’ Jewish lives but that’s crap, getting back their kidnapped solider?—that was just show time—in reality those Jewish lives are nothing but expendable soldiers for the cult. If zionist care about anything to do with Jewish lives it’s the ‘numbers” they want to perserve.

I’m not so sure we can be certain that Zygier had a conscience. I suspect he was about to (or they feared he was about to) spill something big but it is equally possible that he was planning to SELL something. Just because Zionists want you dead it doesn’t neccesarily follow you’re an honorable person.

Not neccesarily, like I said I don’t think he was in it for the money just that there is no indication that this came about as a result of conscience at all. The only thing that can be said with certainty about the case is that we will never ever know the full story.

Sumed you raise some points that have occured to me over the last few days.

Accusing American Zionist (or Australian or whatever nationality) of dual loyalty results in the immediate charge of antisemitism. In Zygiers case it is starting to look like he is becoming accused of dual loyalty by the Israelis. They do not accept dual loyalty they want complete loyalty to Israel.

At this point we do not know what happened. But in many of the scenarios it seems that Zygier was willing to talk with Australian intelligence. Given his work with Israel that is a symptom of dual loyalty. At some level he identified as an Australian and cooperated with their investigators as an Australian citizen. This act was unacceptable to his Israeli handlers. As a result Mossad had him imprisoned, ‘dissappearded’, and placed in solitary confinement during what had to be very extreme interrogations. He either cracked during this process and committed suicide (i.e. under a torture regime) or someone simply killed him.

Given the silence of his family — his parents in Australia and his wife in Israel — one might conclude that they agree. That is dual loyalty is betrayal of Israel. One hundred per-cent loyalty to the Zionist cause is the only acceptable position that super-cedes any attachments one might have to the nation of their birth.

One can imagine the emotional turmoil he experienced in his final days. He must have sensed that he had betrayed Zionism, that his parents would likely reject him and that his Israeli wife could never empathize with his attachment to Australia. He also must have realized that his two daughters would be raised in an environment that would consider their father as a traitor because he was not 100% dedicated to Zionism — i.e. he still retained some attachment to his native land of Australia.

This does not make Zygier a hero, just some poor schlub that had a bit of loyalty to his native land and was placed in a very difficult dilemma by his controllers in Israel.

I think the important point here is that diaspora Jews who encourage their children to join Aliyah might just want to stop and think what that might entail. It probably means that Israel will demand total loyalty, dual loyalty is not enough.

”It is done with the consent of Western governments and intelligence services, including Australia’s.”

I seriously doubt it’s done with ‘their consent’. They turn blind eye to it because otherwise the zionist politicians will use up all the air waves declaring any opposition to Isr actions is a’ second holocaust’ and the various zio lobbies will go into overdrive threatening politicians with dire career consquences if they don’t put a immediate stop to the harrassment of Israel.

”It is done with the consent of Western governments and intelligence services, including Australia’s.” . . . I seriously doubt it’s done with ‘their consent’.

Its much more likely that Israel provides domestic surveillance services to western powers that would otherwise be illegal for them to conduct on their own behalf. They all have a known history of doing that sort of thing among themselves, e.g. Echelon. The idea that Israel is a valuable ally against our common enemies just doesn’t pass the laugh test.

If Netanyahu is making people disappear, its much more likely to be something extremely damaging, like the role played by Israeli handlers and indigenous Jews in the Lavon or Pollard Affairs.

Its much more likely that Israel provides domestic surveillance services to western powers that would otherwise be illegal for them to conduct on their own behalf. They all have a known history of doing that sort of thing among themselves, e.g. Echelon.

Hostage,

Citing Echelon as a model implies that Israel allows other countries to monitor its own citizens and domestically spy on them. But that would never happen because Israel would never allow that to happen, let alone agree to such an arrangement.

Israel would, however, sell its alleged expertise in this particular field, much as it did in the US and in Europe with its so-called ‘expertise’ in Airport security — for example — in order to ‘help’ those countries spy on their citizens and in doing so have its own spies on the ground. Take for example the debacle involving El-Al ‘security’ personnel operating at an airport in South Africa.

Echelon, which by now must have been replaced by a far more advanced system, was a collaborative effort among the world’s English-speaking countries to include Canada, the US, the UK and Australia. I forget, was New Zealand part of that group, too?

Its much more likely that Israel provides domestic surveillance services to western powers that would otherwise be illegal for them to conduct on their own behalf. They all have a known history of doing that sort of thing among themselves, e.g. Echelon.

Hostage is right. But he is not talking about Israel spying on its own citizens, if that’s what you are saying when you write this, which is unclear to me

Citing Echelon as a model implies that Israel allows other countries to monitor its own citizens and domestically spy on them. But that would never happen because Israel would never allow that to happen, let alone agree to such an arrangement.

Israel was given access to Echelon, and they stole PROMIS from Charlie Lecht’s Advanced Computer Techniques in NYC (Madison and 50th, 17th floor). I was there; I saw it. Our idiots in Congress right now have no clue what they are doing with respect to cyber attacks. They are arguing for a ‘private’ solution and not a federal government one. If that happens, we are giving away the farm, the land, the government, and the people. No private company should be in charge of cyber attacks. We need the full force of the US federal government behind this.

Hostage is right. But he is not talking about Israel spying on its own citizens, if that’s what you are saying when you write this, which is unclear to me

Correct, I don’t include Israel among the western powers who have gotten around prohibitions on performing warrantless domestic surveillance by recruiting their allies to do the job for them. I was saying that it’s much more likely that Israel is performing that service for the western powers these days. The notion that Israel is valuable in some other capacity, either as a “military ally” or as a “strategic asset”, is just utter propaganda.

link to abc.net.au
International conventions spell out that when a foreigner is jailed or dies, their diplomatic mission must be informed.
Senator Carr claims Australian diplomats in Israel only knew of Mr Zygier’s incarceration after his death.
Mr van Esveld says it is inexcusable for the Australian Government not to be notified.
“The obligation of one country to notify another when the other citizen has been arrested, detained, especially if they die – that is so basic. It is called customary law,” he said.
“Which means that even if Israel didn’t ratify a treaty saying it has to notify the other country, it still has to do so because that is such a basic norm of interstate relations.”
The greater mystery is why Mr Zygier was imprisoned under such secrecy.
Sources with connections to Israel’s intelligence community have told Foreign Correspondent his predicament would have been “extreme” to warrant such harsh treatment.
Former ASIS operative Mr Reed told the ABC: “However the transgression came about, it would have to be involved with espionage, treachery – very, very sensitive information that known to others would pose an immediate threat to Israel as a nation state.”>>>

Let me ask again—-what, or more importantly, who, could or would pose a “threat to Israel as a nation state” if this whatever was known?
I am bad on dates and haven’t checked, but was he imprisoned before or after the Dubia assassinations?

The US didn’t even do squat when it discovered Israelis were posing as American representatives of NATO and as CIA agents.
So what so scared Isr that they put this guy ia prison x cell?
What so scared his wife and family that they made no effort and raised no hell about it?

American, you have been reading Justin Raymondo, haven’t you? anyways, I agree and so do many others I’ve been reading.

Most people who know anything and follow stuff are in agreement though – the transgression(s) of Ben Zygier/Alon/Allen/Burrows/Burroughs – real or potential – must have involved something much much more serious than some abused Australian passports (is there anyone in the world who doesn’t know that’s happening and that israel has a full-fledged passport farm?). The Der Spiegel article that came out today (me too lazy to provide but easy to find) draws attention again to the company in Milano, Italy (oops, did they say Milano or did I?) that was a Mossad front (now what company would that be? hint: start with Allot and go on from there – 5 more google hits and you’ll get there). But the fact that one – out of who knows how many cover-up companies mossad set up around the world – was compromised is again quite insufficient. We all assume that there are constant attempts to send things to Iran. If one goes down, there are 5 others to take its place – Mossad is anything if not redundant.

Some say, Mr. X was about to “spill some beans” either to ASIO or to the media. Some say (see Avi_G above) that Benji, as they used to call him, was under suspicion of having an attack of conscience and possibly giving in to some unseemly pangs of humanitism. Alas, that too is not enough. Israel has many cures for such diseases (another hint: the guy had a family – which would have been more than enough to keep him in line, conscience is, after all, a luxury).

No, it had to be something else – far graver and threatening to Israel. Something that would cause them to not allow him to ever walk around freely again. And no I don’t believe the “hanged himself-with-bed-sheet-no-camera-in-bathroom”. Just how hard is that?

So, we may all be thinking the same thoughts, right? israel is ultimately afraid of just one country and that’s the US. Australia they can take on for breakfast appetizer (like – anyone doesn’t know just how much influence peddling is going on?). Russia is “whatever”. UK is lots of poodles and endless Kate Middleton’s plastic smiles. And China? yes, some day there’ll be a China to look out for. But not just yet.

So what is it that, were it to become known, could potentially turn the US, lobby and all? it could be something that our X came across accidentally, but could not be trusted of keeping it to himself. (and neither would we! so we better not know, right?).

Of course, it could be that he just found proof that aliens have been running among us for some time (I think I may know some. Don’t you?). Or he may have caused The Great Matrix to get upset and that we can’t have (can cause asteroids to veer off-course, among other calamities). So for all we know, the one and only Mossad may have saved the entire universe from untimely demise, right? (and don’t bring me that Higgs Boson/cyclical universe business….). May be we should send them Thank You notes?

“So, we may all be thinking the same thoughts, right? israel is ultimately afraid of just one country and that’s the US. “….Danaa

That is my thought also. There is no other country that could put an end to Israel as a nation state.
All the comments made by other country’s intelligence experts on this say Zygier treatment is even more extreme than Rabin’s assassin and the nuke whistle blower,Vanuna.
And I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right, they could have controlled him thru his wife, child and family –what on earth could he have known that would have been bad enough for him to sacrifice his wife and child for?
I actually feel sort of sorry for the guy, but this is what comes of involvement with zionist Israel. According to his history in Australia he was indoctrinated from an early age into zionism, attended or belonged to some sort of Jewish Defense group.

I haven’t read what Raymondo has to say about this yet but will pop over and check out his take on it.

“There is much speculation surrounding the reasons for Zygier’s arrest: the most popular appears to be that he was about to reveal details of the 2010 Mossad hit job in Dubai, during which an entire team of some 20 Mossad agents succeeded in murdering an Arab arms dealer with links to Hamas.

The problem with this theory is that the facts about that case are pretty much known: the Israelis collected data from travelers to Israel and then used it to create bogus passports, which were then issued to Mossad agents. Photos of these agents appeared in the Kuwaiti media, and were published on the internet. A Kuwaiti paper is now claiming it was Zygier who turned over this information, including the photos, to the Kuwaitis, and that the Israelis kidnapped him in Kuwait. The paper quotes “a former Mossad commander” who contends Zygier was part of the Dubai assassination team until he “switched to the other side.” Yet this tall tale hardly explains why the Israelis would keep the identity of “Prisoner X” such a closely-guarded secret, quashing press reports of his incarceration, and denying his very existence until now. It wouldn’t explain why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an “emergency” meeting with Israeli editors over their handling of the story. And it wouldn’t account for the fact that Zygier was apparently in contact with the Australian intelligence service prior to his arrest – or have they, too, “switched to the other side”?

I guess it all depends on what one means by “other side.” Because, from the perspective of the increasingly isolated Israeli government – which cultivates a narrative of the Jewish state as besieged on every side – “the other side” means everybody else, including the West.

We don’t know the nature of Zygier’s “crime,” but we know with reasonable certainty what it was not. In all likelihood it had nothing to do with the Dubai assassination, the forging of passports, or any of the other depredations against international law and morality that we already know about. It’s something new – and worse.

There is some speculation it had something to do with the impersonation of CIA officers by Mossad agents who were trying to recruit Jundullah terrorists in their campaign to destabilize Iran, and this may be more credible: after all, according to the report by Mark Perry in Foreign Policy, “The Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives – what is commonly referred to as a ‘false flag’ operation.” (Emphasis added.)

So it isn’t just Australian, New Zealand, and European passports the Israelis are stealing – there’s an Israeli “passport farm” churning out American passports, too. But then again, why would Zygier – reportedly a committed Zionist, who had been recruited by Mossad and emigrated to Israel where he started a family – threaten to expose this type of operation? It doesn’t add up – unless the Israelis were mounting an operation against his native Australia, or other Western countries such as the US.”>>>

First, in addition to the passport red herring story, it doesn’t make sense Zygier would take part in the Dubia assassination and then turn over information on it to Kuwaiti. So that’s nonsense.
My speculation is two things—-Zygier either knew about something that “was going to happen”, not something that had already happened,—-or —–Zygier knew about ‘someone’, some high placed official” in the US or possibily in Australia that is a Israeli mole or Mossad asset.

There is a good analysis of what’s going on behind the Prisoner X case. It was argued in Haaretz by Anshel Pfeffer (Mossad identity crisis) that the Mossad chief Meyer Dagan changed the politics of the Israeli secret service into a tool of warfare. Obsessed with killing enemies the Mossad lost his identity as a secret service which has to collect information secretly and without being uncovered to be helpful for the main actors of politics, namely the government.

The CIA lost its identity as an intelligence-gathering entity and became a tool of the powers that be for whatever they wanted early in the Eisenhower administration, once Allen Dulles became Director of Central Intelligence.

Pfeffer’s claim is nonsense and is emblematic of the internal rivalries in Israeli political and military culture.

The Mossad, whether under Dagan or otherwise, was always a tool of warfare. The Mossad was always used and considered by the Israeli political apparatus as Israel’s proverbial long arm of justice. And their definition of what constituted “justice” was extremely elastic, hence the sprees of murder and assassination, sabotage, bombings etc..

Heck, even the Mossad’s previous motto was enough of an indicator; the verbatim translation from Hebrew is as follows: “By Way of Trickery/Ruse/Subterfuge/Deception/Scheming Though Shall Make War.”

For the Mossad, since its inception, so-called intelligence gathering always went hand in hand with active interference (i.e. Instigating civil wars, arming one faction against another, murdering and assassinating those deemed a threat to the state, carrying out acts of sabotage and terrorism etc.).

It was NEVER solely an information gathering organization. And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to your face.

It is a well known fact in Israeli society that new Olim, those Jews who move to Israel to become Israeli citizens, often surrender their foreign passports to the State of Israel. There is tacit agreement between the individual and the state that the person handing over his/her passport is doing so for the benefit of world Jewry, for the benefit of ‘saving/rescuing Jews worldwide’.

Individuals who do so are often aware of the implicit fact that Israel’s intelligence agencies would/could at one point use their passports.

However, it seems that in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the Dubai assassination, that Israeli authorities have resorted to using the identities (Not the actual passports) of foreign born Israelis without the approval of those individuals.

A few such individuals came forward and publicly complained to the Israeli press when they found out their identities had been hijacked by Israel’s state apparatus, in this case the Mossad.

So it seems that the Mossad has worked up quite the chutzpah over the years, first relying on foreign-born Jews for their passports and in recent years actively and aggressively using those Jews whether they liked it or not. And to that category of abusing Jews and sacrificing them for the ‘good of the state’ — if you will — belongs the Prisoner X affair (Does the bombing in Bulgaria belong in the same category? I don’t know.)

Nonetheless, it’s quite possible that this is not a new phenomenon. That is to say that carrying out state-sanctioned operations has always been done on the backs of a few Jews. The difference is that modern communications and the Internet have made it easier to learn about those incidents.

After all, Jews do and have attacked Jews. Such was the case when Israel removed the colonists from the Gaza Strip. The colonists responded with fury and violence.

Consider also the Altalena incident in which in-fighting between the newly established Israeli military and the Irgun (Etzel) resulted in the “IDF” bombing the ship, killing 19 Jews that day.

Avi
Apparently the Bulgaria/Hezbollah linkage is tenuous at best:link to consortiumnews.com
” Major revelations about the investigation by the former head of the probe and by a top Bulgarian journalist have further damaged the credibility of the Bulgarian claim to have found links between the suspects and Hezbollah.”
According to the article, the two “accomplices” had more north African links that lead to being potential “al Qaida” operatives rather than Hezbollah.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, could have been killed when the door of her private jet mysteriously broke and swung open thousands of feet in the air. It looks like a freak accident, but it is almost unheard of for a heavily secured aircraft door to open by its self in mid-flight, and something was apparently stopping the cabin crew from closing the door again. Conspiracy theorists are speculating that this incident could be interpreted as a warning or even an attempted assassination. Helen Clark has certainly made some dangerous enemies. One year ago, when the government of New Zealand put two Mossad agents in prison, Helen Clark publicly rejected Israel’s official response and imposed sanctions on the Israeli regime.

On August 30, 2005, New Zealand resumed diplomatic relations with Israel.

She and her Labor government lost power to the conservative National Party in the general election of November 2008. New Zealand’s new prime minister is John Key, whose mother was Jewish but who himself is agnostic and attends church with his children. The Israeli embassy in New Zealand, which had closed in 2002 (when Helen Clark was prime minister) reopened in 2010.

It is unimaginable that any senior politician in Australia would speak like Goff: “We’re not prepared to see friendly countries act in that sort of criminal way against us.”
Sadly I am no longer certain that senior politicians in New Zealand would speak this way now, unless the story was out in the public domain where the voters could put pressure on them. Don’t forget that this is the same Phil Goff who chaired the international commitee looking into the Marvi Marmara incident, which concluded that Israel was justified in its actions.

One very interesting aspect of this affair is the light it sheds on Israeli military censorship.

Israeli military censors have total purview over what may be published or aired on subjects touching national security. This works via prior restraint; all articles must be reviewed by censors before being published.

In the past this has actually been used to erase swathes of history. Thanks to Israeli censorship, during much of Israel’s history the story put out by Israeli propagandists that Palestinian refugees left their homes voluntarily was widely believed in the West, hard as that is to believe now. For example, for decades censors did not permit anyone to publish a reference to the 1948 overnight expulsion at gunpoint of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians from the towns of Ramleh and Lydda by the Haganah, precursor to the IDF. It wasn’t until a censored portion of Yitzhak Rabin’s autobiography was leaked to the West in 1979 that this fact was revealed. Of course, Palestinians had been saying it for years, but who listened to them?

This subject is predictably largely ignored by US media. It doesn’t mesh with the fable of a “vibrant democracy” that is “just like us”.

What is so impressive about this story is the incredible loyalty that Zygier’s parents and family continue to show towards the Zionist cause. Their support is total. Raising their child to become a warrior for Israel, sending him on an Aliyah and likely encouraging him to become an Israeli agent. He gets in some kind of jam. Mossad finds him a liability. They place him in solitary confinement, “interrogate” him for 10 months and then he dies as a result. Either Mossad killed him directly or the conditions of his confinement led him to suicide. He was tortured if one accepts that living in solitary confinement for 10 months while being interrogated is torture.

After this horrific ordeal and betrayal of their son, the family continues to play the role of the loyal Zionist follower without public complaint. This is impressive.

I don’t think there is any good news coming out of Israel these days. It really seems as though the country is reaping the fruits of 45 years of pure nihilism. And it looks like you just can’t turn it off at 5pm.

As’ad Abu Khalil (aka The Angry Arab) opines that Ziegler may have been handed over to Israel by the Dubai authorities when he (allegedly) blew Mossad’s cover over the Al Mabhouh murder. Now, it’s been an ope secret for years that Israel enjoys good ‘security cooperation’ with the Gulf dictatorships, but there is of course no way these governments could openly admit that, as officially they maintain the facade of opposition to Israel.

I’ve no idea if Abu Khalil’s theory is correct, but it might explain the extreme secrecy around him, compared to which Vanunu got the 5***** treatment. It can’t just have been about a few foreign passports, which has been known about for years.

Lowenstein adds nothing to this piecemeal story already out there in the media other than his own biases, prevarications and speculations:

the ways in which young Jews are groomed by an Israeli intelligence service to commit acts of terrorism and subterfuge across the world under the guise of protecting national security. It is done with the consent of Western governments and intelligence services, including Australia’s.

the Zionist schooling system and its associated entities indoctrinate Jews to slavishly back Israel and demonise Arabs.

He uses the Zygier affair as an opportunity to slang off against Zionism per se and intelligent, young Jewish people who choose to make Aliya to Israel. These are well-educated people, seriously concerned about Israel’s plight in a hostile world and not indoctrinated morons. If some choose to go and live in Israel for a while, learn some Hebrew and serve in the Israeli army, that doesn’t make them the usurped ‘tools’ of anybody, or any nation.

Israel’s repressive censorship

This is pure opiniation that has nothing to do with reality. This story is an issue about internal security – all countries protect themselves against treasonable offences. Just compare the situation in Israel to the scant information we get about the subversive goings-on in neighbouring secretive Arab countries.

What the Jewish community worries about is the wider society regarding Jews as disloyal to Australia.

The Jewish community certainly worries about its standing in the wider community. Perfectly normal.

Their response may have been co-ordinated with the Israeli embassy.

Absolute rubbish.

it’s clear that international norms were breached during his incarceration due to a lack of legal representation and conditions inside jail

Zygier had full legal representation – more rubbish from Lowenstein.

Australia offered a muted response to the illegal Israeli use of forged passports in 2010 for the purpose of murdering Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh; Israel barely received a rap on the knuckles.

As one commenter on New Matilda has said about this latter remark:

“More innocent Australian citizens have been killed post-WWII by Islamist terrorists than anyone else. Islamist terrorism is a real and present danger for Australians. Shared intelligence is a keystone to countering this threat. Like it or not Israeli intelligence is critically important to our counter-terrorist programme. Israel has far more developed intelligence sources throughout the Islamic world than we do and sharing intelligence with them no doubt benefits us more than the intelligence that we provide in reciprocation. It is important to our National security and lives of our citizens that we sustain these intelligence linkages.”

It is completely false to suggest that Australian authorities turned a blind eye to the illegal theft of Australian identities by Mossad – the Australian government actually kicked out an Israeli diplomat at the time of the passports affair which hardly demonstrates insidious complicity between Israel and Australia.

mayhem, dragging a comment by a hasbarist from some other comment section doesn’t add credibility to it. and what of this: “More innocent Australian citizens have been killed post-WWII by Islamist terrorists than anyone else….” ?

In other words the rate of Australian citizens killed by islamic terrorists since WW2 is 88 vs 156,400 homicide and road fatalities (assuming murder has been an average of 300 and road fatalities are 2,000 over 68 years). The means the chance of you being killed by an islamic terrorist attack are 0.05% those of you being murdered or killed in a car road accident, ie. neglible.

It’s not nearly as serious and dramatic as you suggest.

And if you want to think about the number of innocent civilian’s lives Australians have taken since WW2 – and you should, as we will be treated as we have treated others – I’m sure the balance sheet would show Australians have killed many more innocent Koreans, Vietnamese, Afghanis and Iraqis since WW2 than the 88 lost in Bali.

We do not need Israel or anything it has to offer. Israel needs Australia, much less so than the US but for the same reason: as long as Israelis can keep up the pretense they are a western democracy they will not have to face what a nightmare and overwhelming failure project Israel is.

Sorry Mayhem but Zygier as an Australian Jew did Alyah and wanted to become an Israeli warrior or spook or whatever. He obviously did not cut the mustard and was found dispensable. That is the nature of warrior states. They either killed him or pressured him into suicide. Let that be the lesson for every diaspora Jew across the globe — Do not send your children into the clutches of Israel. They will just become pawns in a game much larger than they could imagine.

“It is completely false to suggest that Australian authorities turned a blind eye to the illegal theft of Australian identities by Mossad – the Australian government actually kicked out an Israeli diplomat at the time of the passports affair which hardly demonstrates insidious complicity between Israel and Australia.”

Oooooh, the Australian government cracking the whip there real hard, eh? Did they also make him go to bed without dinner that night?

This, my friends, is what I call a STRAWMAN ARGUMENT. The rest is just pure Hasbara.

Israel abolished the death penalty in 1954 and put a Nazi war criminal on trial.
But Israel routinely uses warplanes or death squads to summarily execute thousands of Palestinians (including women and children) WITHOUT charge or trial.

The most recent example was on 18 November 2012 when Israel obliterated 12 Palestinian civilians (four children aged 1 to 7, six women and two men) in their three-story home in a densely populated residential neighbourhood in Gaza City:link to hrw.org

Collateral damage, my friend, collateral damage. Those children were to blame for so many reasons, i.e. for being Palestinians, for choosing the wrong parents, for being on the wrong side of the separation security wall, for being in the wrong house at the wrong time. Surely, you can’t hold the Most Moral Army in The World™ for things that are not only out of their control but clearly not their fault.

You wrote:
“Israel abolished the death penalty in 1954″. Wikipedia says that this abolition was only for peacetime. So has this abolition been moot, since the country has been in a de-jure war since it’s creation with at least one of its neighbors, particularly the conquered Palestinians?

‘Grooming by Israel’ – that gets at the root of much of the Israeli Ponzi Scheme.

The American media, American politicians, or young Jews indoctrinated by Birthright/to be wannable IDF brownshirts, or AIPAC-spies like Rosen, Weissman or Pollard – it’s all the same deliberate manipulation

A combination of carrots and sticks, seduction and intimidation

And Netanyahu and the rest of the Ponzi Scheme managers are upset that their venture is getting bad press – haha – of course they are.

Israel should be singled out and dual Israeli/US citizenship made illegal in the US because of Israel’s track history with using dual nationals all over the world. Who cares if it’s ‘not fair’ that we would allow Brits or French to have dual citizenship – they are not the problem Israel is and they don’t have Mossad-modus operandi

If this were the case, then neoconservative/AIPAC cahoots directly with Israel would stand out like a sore treasonous thumb and we wouldn’t have to listen to Lindsey Graham on the TV.

AIPAC-spies or Richard Perle wouldn’t be able to say ‘everybody does it for Israel’ anymore

The impunity that Mossad uses just shows how thick their cover has been and for how long they have enjoyed it. 4 passports in 4 yrs? – c’mon guys – show some class

A major issue in this case is, of course, the issue of dual loyalty. All Jews can become automatic citizens of Israel merely by going there and saying they want to be citizens. Strong zionist families promote strong loyalty to Israel, and this sometimes leads to things like handing over their national passports to Mossad and entering the Israeli army and oppressing Palestinians. Perhaps recinding someones citizenship if they join a foreign army or hand over their passports to another nation, would be a good idea to promote.

Zionists disappeared one of their own and he met his demise because Zionists fear the truth more than they fear Palestinians or those rockets resistance groups launch from time to time. ZIONISTS WILL DO ANYTHING TO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH, EVEN KILL THE MESSENGER. This is how dangerous Zionists are. If Zionists find the truth threatening to the survival of their precious Zionism would they attempt to do what they tried with Meshaal? Might they put a drop of poison in the messenger’s ear, or a drop of plutonium in his food? Do we really know how this operative died? How many messengers of the truth has Zionism already killed over the years, some unbeknownst to us?

The truth is the most powerful of all weapons, and how far have Zionists gone to suppress it? Who have they already off’d; how many lives and careers have they destroyed to protect Zionism from exposure?

Zionists disappeared one of their own and he met his demise because Zionists fear the truth more than they fear Palestinians or those rockets resistance groups launch from time to time.

Meir Tobianski was an officer in the IDF who was executed as a traitor on the basis of suspicion. The first director of the IDF’s intelligence branch, Isser Be’eri, ordered the execution after a hastily convened field court-martial. A year later Tobianski was posthumously exonerated of all charges. See Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Political Assassinations by Jews: A Rhetorical Device for Justice, (1992), pp 263-264

Wikipedia mentions that some historiannamed Kron thought Tobianski did pass information. But Wikipedia also mentions the info would have been passed during a ceasefire. Of course, Wikipedia can be biased too.

Besides University professors, birthright visitors to Israel, what other professions are targeted for recruitment by Mossad ?

Rabbis, from ynet:

“Rumors surrounding Rabbi Shlomo Aviner’s ties to Mossad have been circulating for years, and on Thursday he admitted for the first time that he was sent by the Israeli intelligence agency to Iran, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

In an interview with religious website “Kippah,” the rabbi from Beit-El recounted the recruitment process: “Following the (Islamic) revolution of 1979, I received a phone call. ‘Shlomo, we need you.'” The following day Aviner was sent to Iran with a French passport. ”

@Annie, you only allow yourself to believe what denigrates Israel.
No matter what Israel does you will damn it.
What credibility can diehards like yourself have when all they can do is criticize the one side?
Have you ever been to Israel?

life is not that simple mayhem. all options are on the table. liars lie. governments do it. therefore it behooves one to ask questions like ,why release or confirm this information now? who does it serve? what compelling reasons do we have to believe it?

i do not know what happened which i communicate in my comment. you’re the one with the black or white sureness, not me. if it makes you feel any better. i don’t believe lots of my own government’s naarative either. governments lie all the time. so we are to believe this top secret situation, so top secret he was kept in this cell, and now they spill the beans. why? you turning this into a rant about me is just an ad hominem. boring. liars lie, get used to it. when liars talk to you never except what they tell you at face value. and what a coincidence one source linked has already been tried and served his sentence, hence no repercussions. to neat, no compelling reason to believe.

Frankly it doesn’t add up. If you’re trying to prove to a hezbollah agent that you work for Mossad you might sacrifice a low-level informant or two, but not the two tops ones Israel has in Lebanon.

The story also restores Zygier his status as a great patriot of Israel, whereas previously the most prominent explanation was that he was disillusioned with Israel and spilled intelligence to ASIO (Australian intelligence). Now all of that is washed away – and it is Zygier’s own personality flaw that got him in trouble and more of the same that got him in even more trouble, a rogue Mossadi so passionate about Israel he launched his own operations to prove himself to his bosses.

It’s possible, I guess, but I have trouble believing Zygier is as stupid as he is made out to be…

If Zygier really had become disillusioned with Israel I can understand why the Mossad would want to cover it up. The last thing they’d would want is ordinary Israelis thinking is that Israel is now so rotten even Mossad agents are jumping ship. But the train is a runaway anyhow, I can’t see how it can be stopped.

That was my take too Annie. The story was out, people were speculating and given the reaction of the Israelis in this case, they were speculating this was something very big. Best to damp all that down with a story that presented Zygier as fully committed to Zionism, so much so that when he was stuck behind a desk for his mediocrity he went rogue in an attempt to prove his worth but sadly was taken in by an evil Hezbollah agent who bested him. He was supposedly the cause of the loss of two valued spies for Israel. Meaning the Israeli reaction was justified but Zygier is still a good Zionist who did nothing evil. Call me a cynic but it’s way too neat and convenient.

if he was as then as now
then when the facts came out
then if because in 2010 and it is now 2013 because he is there
and that is all there is to it
who was he ?
nobody knows who nothing at all
but bob thinks its very funny
he who laughs now will cry later
let no tears flow at all
save them for a rainy day
shutupyourface ignorance breads butter
all the better to spread my dear

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